A blog about the 3 types of peer-reviewed literature.
In academia, or in anything for that matter, literature is the way we receive information. Whether you are casually browsing the internet one day after work, or you are frantically researching a topic in the library for a school paper, you have come across at least one of the 3 types of peer-reviewed literature.
Before we get into the types of peer-reviewed literature there are, we’ll first go over what peer-reviewing is. Peer reviewing is the process of subjecting an author’s scholarly work, research, or ideas to the scrutiny of others who are experts in the same field. Reviewing must be done ethically, objectively, and with integrity through constructive criticism and advice. This ensures published work is accurate and ethical in itself before it gets to potential readers. Without this practice, academia, and in broader terms, the internet, would be left to fend for itself and nothing would be believable.
The following explains the 4 main ways peer-reviewing is done:
-Single blind review: author does not know reviewer, most common in science
-Double blind review: author does not know reviewer and vice versa
-Open review: author and reviewer are known to each other
-collaborative review: a team reviews the work before or after the article is released
Now that we know what peer-reviewed literature is, we can move onto investigating the three main types of peer-reviewed literature. The three types of literature do not refer to the medium they are receiving the literature by, such as the internet versus a hard cover book. Instead, the types of literature refer to what kinds of information is found within the literature. The three types of literature include: primary literature, secondary literature, and tertiary literature.
Primary literature is literature that shares original research and new discoveries, results of research activities, and/or analysis of data collected. This includes: original research published as articles in peer-reviewed journals, dissertations, technical reports and conference proceedings. Secondary literature is literature that summarizes and synthesizes primary literature. This includes: literature review articles and books. Tertiary literature shares summaries or condensed versions of material. This is what we explore on the internet daily as a way to look up facts about a general overview of subjects. This includes: textbooks, dictionaries, encyclopedias (such as Wikipedia) and handbooks.
Primary and secondary literature is what is mainly used in academia today. In science and ecology, many researchers individually and collaboratively work on new studies and experiments and they share their findings with colleagues, friends and the public through journals. This type of work is an example of primary literature. Another very common practice in science and ecology is building off of previous data and work done by past researchers in the field, such as meta-analysis. This is an example of secondary literature.
Without peer-reviewed literature, science would be harder to advance. Being able to gain knowledge on others work and/or past work is vital in learning the way the natural world work. If scientists could not learn and build off of past ideas, or collaborate with other scientists works, scientific fields would come to a halt and discoveries would come by even more rarely. Peer-reviewed literature ensures the advancement of science in an ethical and accurate manner.
Applied Plant Ecology Winter 2020 